It used to be you could type in www.google.us you would be able to see the US results, now it redirects (can they do that?) based on your IP address.

As a global advertiser, you have to take at face value the fact that your ads are showing, can never see your competition and this is something that is particluarly detrimental to a lot of advertisers.

I'd be interested in how many of the 100,000 odd advertisers are actually advertising in all the countries, but can never check the competition out, save for those where they live.

I don't know about other countries however from Venezuela we can see our US competition from SJ, we can see our German comp. on google.de, in Holland we use google.nl, in the UK we use google.co.uk, etc.

Each area is different with local ads that don't appear on the other servers.

Note: Anonymous proxy servers are ussally the result of system admins misconfiguring their systems. You will most likely be using some company proxy server without permission. You should do a whois on the proxy to make sure it is not a government agency. You are pretty safe with private companies, if you use their service in moderation.

don't know about other countries however from Venezuela we can see our US competition from SJ, we can see our German comp. on google.de, in Holland we use google.nl, in the UK we use google.co.uk, etc.

This thread is timely for me too - I just asked in the wrong forum. The above trick only works if you don't have a national Google. Here in .au I get the .au ads via www-sj too.

Upon closer inspection, I notice that google.de does not give me .au Adwords but I don't get US-only ones either. I only get international ones and .de ones. Ditto for google.nl

So the conclusion is that for the English language, we're forced to see the local ones.

Before I get an Anonymizer account, does anyone here know that I am assured of a US IP address? The free one based in .ws actually shows adwords for Mexico. (Yes, I will ask Anonymizer as well but someone here might have personal experience)

I agree with andrewg, if we are advertising and can't see the ads and the competition it's difficult to know what sort of tactics to employ, you should make all of it available, in my humble opinion, even if that is through some interface just for advertisers.

I am in Australia and can avoid redirection to google.com.au by going to Google by clicking the "Google HomePage" link on my Google Toolbar.

That doesn't work for me. I have a list of the words my client pays for and I haven't once seen his ads. When I look for generic products like "digital camera" I see a few .au - I bet that people in the UK will see some .uk there but no .au.

My home page is the US Google Advanced Search, yet it makes no difference. It's very much a Layer 3/4 switching kind of trick.

"In google type free proxy server. You will find a list of sites that provide proxy services. Look in the proxy table and find a site that is both in the USA and Anonymous. Note the IP Address and Port Number

It can be done easily without switching proxy settings back and force. Suppose you use IE, so go ahead and download Opera, then setup proxy settings there and you are all set. When you want to check your foreign ads, just open Opera and enjoy. You can even have both browsers open at the same time and they do not interfere.

The only problem is that you can't have more countries at the same time than you have different browsers setup without reconfiguration, but normally people outside the US want to look at US ads, so this setup is Ok.

Sure, its a pain to use free proxy servers, but how often do you need to check up on the competition. I do it once a month so its no big deal. Maybe in your business line, the competition is competive, but in mind, they are a bump on a log.